Commonly in business, companies are required to record customer information received over a phone call. This information must be rapidly and accurately recorded to ensure the best possible customer service and satisfaction. The processes used to acquire this information have evolved over time as technologies, such as computer applications, have improved.
Typically, upon receiving a call, small businesses record customer information by having an operator take notes onto a paper notepad or a form. These notes may later be transcribed into a computer system or filed in order to keep a historical record of the transaction. Alternatively, in larger businesses, phone operators enter the customer information directly into a computer system while on the phone with the customer.
Speech recognition is a process by which speech is converted to text by a computer program. Speech recognition can be used to capture verbal commands or data to be used as information in computer programs.
A common use of speech recognition is in dictation systems, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking® (Dragon Naturally Speaking is a registered trademark of Nuance Communications, Inc., headquartered in Burlington, Mass.). In a dictation system, the user speaks into a microphone connected to a computer, and the words spoken are interpreted either as commands to be run on the computer or as transcription that should be entered into, for example, a word processing program. A dictation system typically has a process by which it learns to better recognize the speech of the user in order to improve the accuracy of the speech recognition.
In the case of an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, speech recognition is used to both capture commands and data in order to facility customer service in a phone operating system. A customer calling into such a system would be prompted by an IVR system with a series of questions that when answered may be confirmed by the IVR system with questions, such as “Did you say billing?” IVR systems are typically used to obtain preliminary information before forwarding to an actual operator or responding to simple inquiries that do no require operator intervention.